The Noble 8 Fold Path
Weekly Texts
Week #1, Right View
Thich Nhat Hanh
Dharma Talk on the Diamond Sutra
Right view is the foundation of the Noble Eightfold Path presented by the Buddha. Right view helps us to think correctly. It helps us to say things correctly, and to do things correctly, so we don’t create suffering and despair for ourselves and for others.
When we practice mindfulness, we produce thoughts in alignment with right thinking, full of understanding and compassion. Then we only create happiness; we do not create suffering. With the practice of right speech, we say things that move us in the direction of understanding, compassion, and nondiscrimination. With the practice of right action, our physical action will only protect, save, help, and rescue.
That is why the practice of mindfulness based on right view can help heal ourselves and help heal the world. We can start right away if we have a friend or a community of practice supporting us.
We have to cultivate right view. If you listen to a Dharma talk or read a book, you’ll get some ideas about right view. But right view is something you experience directly, not through concepts and ideas. Right view is the kind of insight, the kind of under-standing, that can transcend the notion of being and non-being. It is not easy to understand.
Week #2, Right View
Joseph Goldstein,
"Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening"
Chapter 35: The Fourth Noble Truth
The Way Leading to the Cessation of Dukkha.
It is not insignificant that the Buddha called this last of the noble truths 'a path'. The implication is that these eight successive steps lead somewhere, that there is a final goal. Although the notion of goal can sometimes lead to overstriving, to a kind of spiritual ambition that gets in the way of realization, this overstriving has more to do with how we are practicing rather than to the understanding that there is indeed an end of dukkha. Rene Daumal, in his book Mount Analogue, describes the crucial balance between living fully in the moment and, at the same time, keeping the vision of the final destination:
Keep your eyes fixed on the way to the top, but don't forget to look right in front of you. The last step depends on the first. Don't think you have arrived just because you see the summit. Watch your footing, be sure of the next step, but don't let that distract you from the highest goal. The first step depends on the last.
Week #3, Right Thought
The Way to End Suffering
by Bhikkhu Bodhi
The unwholesome thought is like a rotten peg lodged in the mind; the wholesome thought is like a new peg suitable to replace it. The actual contemplation functions as the hammer used to drive out the old peg with the new one. The work of driving in the new peg is practice—practicing again and again, as often as is necessary to reach success. The Buddha gives us his assurance that victory can be achieved.
He says that whatever one reflects upon frequently becomes the inclination of the mind. If one frequently thinks sensual, hostile, or harmful thoughts, desire, ill will, and harmfulness become the inclination of the mind. If one frequently thinks in the opposite way, renunciation, goodwill, and harmlessness become the inclination of the mind. The direction we take always comes back to ourselves, to the intentions we generate moment by moment in the course of our lives.
Week #4, Right Thought
The Wise Heart
by Jack Kornfield
Whatever we regularly think colors our experience, all day, every day. Once we start to watch these thoughts, we discover that most of them are reruns. Others are about problems.
What is thought? Thought is your friend. Thought is your enemy. No one can hurt you as much as unwise thought. No one can help you more than wise thought. Our life is determined and shaped by our thoughts.
Usually, we are only half-conscious of the way thoughts direct our life; we are lost in the thoughts as if they are reality. We take our own mental creations quite seriously, endorsing them without reservation.
Transformation of thought can reorient an entire life, or it can be an initial step in the process of healing.
Week #5, Right Thought
Right Intention (Samma Sankappa) on the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment.
By Bhikkhu Bodhi
(My note: samma sankappa is also translated by others as thought or resolve)
The Buddha explains right intention as threefold: the intention of renunciation, the intention of good will, and the intention of harmlessness. The three are opposed to three parallel kinds of wrong intention. The intention of renunciation counters the intention of desire, the intention of good will counters the intention of ill will, and the intention of harmlessness counters the intention of harmfulness.
The Buddha discovered this twofold division of thought in the period prior to his Enlightenment. While he was striving for deliverance, meditating in the forest, he found that his thoughts could be distributed into two different classes. In one he put thoughts of desire, ill will, and harmfulness, in the other thoughts of renunciation, good will, and harmlessness. Whenever he noticed thoughts of the first kind arise in him, he understood that those thoughts lead to harm for oneself and others, obstruct wisdom, and lead away from Nibbana.
Reflecting in this way he expelled such thoughts from his mind and brought them to an end. But whenever thoughts of the second kind arose, he understood those thoughts to be beneficial, conducive to the growth of wisdom, aids to the attainment of Nibbana. Thus he strengthened those thoughts and brought them to completion.
Week #6, Right Thought
Joseph Goldstein,"Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening"
Chapter 38: Right Thought, Renunciation
In Buddhism, the Pali word for "renunciation" is nekkhamma,
WAYS TO PRACTICE RENUNCIATION
Change Habit Patterns
We can examine various habits and simply change the routine. We can practice renouncing complexity. We so often create very complicated lives for ourselves, getting lost again and again in the drama of our stories and emotions, in some way relishing them.
Practice the Wisdom of No
It’s important to understand what this restraint means because it lies at the heart of our practice. Practicing the wisdom of no is great art, and we need to learn how to do it in a loving and wise way.
Restraint is not repression or avoidance. Restraint doesn’t mean pushing things away or denying their presence. It does not mean being judgmental or having aversion toward certain aspects of our experience. With wise restraint, we are open to everything that arises, but we see it all with discriminating wisdom.
This is the practice of renunciation. Here, the power of no becomes the expression of a free mind. This restraint leads to strength of mind, conservation of energy, and steadfastness and stillness that is not so easily shaken.
Cultivate an Unshakeable Mind
“And the mind of the great being was not moved.” This line can become a polestar for us, as we practice the renunciation of identifying with whatever arises, so that our own minds are not moved in the face of desire, longing, or fear.
Week #7, Right Thought
Compassion: Listening to the cries of the world'
Christina Feldman
Compassion is not a quality to be cultivated in isolation, aloof from life. It is easy to be compassionate from a distance, when your heart is undisturbed. When you are surrounded by those who love and care for you, when you have built a world where pain is repressed or ignored, you can easily immerse yourself in thoughts of love and tolerance.
Yet that is a fragile world, built on foundations that will always crumble. Compassion speaks of the willingness to engage with tragedy, loss, and pain. Its domain is not only the world of those you love and care for, but equally the people who threaten you, the countless people you don't know, the homeless person you meet on the street, and the situations of anger and hatred you recoil from.
It is here that you learn about the depths of tolerance and understanding that are possible for each one of us. It is here that you learn about dignity, meaning, and greatness of heart. As a rabbinic text encourages us, 'in the places where there are no human beings, be one'.
Week #8, Right Thought
Compassion: Listening to the cries of the world
Chapter 8, Compassion and Emptiness
Christina Feldman
Compassion is a way of being and seeing in the midst of joy and anguish, pleasure and pain, which is deeply rooted in an understanding of emptiness. Compassion is the natural expression and embodiment of a heart without boundaries and a mind unclouded by delusion.
Understanding compassion is to see it as the natural embodiment of wisdom. Deep insight can reveal the emptiness of all notions of self and other. The world of appearances is no longer mistaken for reality. The Buddha said that emptiness is the abode of the liberated person. Forsaking all notions of duality and separation, compassion becomes the language of emptiness.
Emptiness does not describe a dismissal of life but the end of all notions that anything that appears as a fixed and isolated existence, including yourself. Emptiness is not the cessation of life but the cessation of misunderstanding and confusion. The Buddha descrived emptiness as the wisdom born of up rooting illusion or wrong view.